GS WorldView
Fall 2001
SoftSwitch Manual
Chapter 4: Supplemental Programs
This chapter discusses some of the further features of SoftSwitch, and also
other programs such as Keepsake and the Screen Manager that are on the
SS.SYSTEM.DISK.
Example #7: Capturing a Screen Image
Another special feature of SoftSwitcb is its ability to capture a screen image
from one program, and then to "paste" this image into another.
Before looking at how this is done, a short explanation of the various screeQ
displays on an Apple IIGS is in order.
There are a total of 13 video screen displays available on the Apple IIGS
They are as follows:
40 colwnn text, page 1 and 2.
80 colwnn text, page 1 and 2.
La-Res graphics, page 1 and 2.
Double La-Res graphics, page 1 and 2
Hi-Res graphics, page 1 and 2.
Double Hi-Res graphics, page 1 and 2.
Super Hi-Res graphics, page 1 only.
Many of these displays use the same part of memory as another. That is,
what you see just changes depending on the display mode of the computer,
but you're still looking at the same part of memory .
As an example, if you've seen the 80 colunm screen suddenly go to 40
columns, you may have noticed that every other character from the 80
colunm screen is left on the 40 column screen. This is because the 80
colunm display mode uses the same memory that the 40 colunm display
uses, plus another equal amount of memory to double the number of
columns displayed.
SoftSwitch can exan1ine and copy the following screen displays:
40 column text, page 1 only.
80 column text, page 1 only.
Hi-Res graphics, page 1 and 2.
Double Hi-Res, page 1 and 2.
Having "captured" one of these images, SoftSwitch can then paste it into
another program on either a Hi-Res or Double Hi-Res display, depending
on what was captured.
Most of the time, you won't need to know which display mode or page is
being used to create what you see in a given program, but understanding
that there are many different modes will make it easier to understand what's
going on when you use SoftSwitch.
In many graphics programs, the "picture" that you create is stored in two
places within the program. The entire picture is first stored somewhere in
memory, often on "page 2". This picture is not necessarily ever seen by the
user of the program. Instead, this image is merged with whatever menus,
prompts, window borders, and so on, that the program creates for the actual
display that you see while using it.
For example, let's consider a program called Dazzle Draw, from
Broderbund Software. As you look at the picture you're working on, you
can also see the menus and other program features displayed at both the top
and bottom of the screen.
One of those options is a choice to view the entire picture.
Dazzle Draw (and many programs like it) keeps the entire picture on the
page 2 display. What you see while you work with the program is the page
1 display with added menus and program screen displays. When you select
"View Entire Picture," the computer changes the display for a moment to
page 2, and the menus, etc. "disappear."
Thus, if you wanted to capture the actual picture being worked on, you
would want to copy the page 2 display, not the page 1 display that included
all the unwanted "extras.'
Likewise, if you wanted to paste an image into Dazzle Draw, you would
want to paste the image into page 2. This is because page I is constantly
being re-drawn based on the image on page 2. If you pasted to page I, as
soon as the screen was redrawn, the image would change back to the image
from page 2. Instead, if you paste an image into page 2 in Dazzle Draw,
this will become the master image for the picture and display screen, and
you can then edit or save this. picture as you would any other.
Example #8: Examining the Image
The best way to get a feel for this is with an actual example. Run the Draw
It program from the DeskTop, and then draw a few trees in the middle of the
screen. Then change the current shape to the "house" shape.
Go to SoftSwitcb, and then press Open-Apple-E to "Examine'. the image.
This command lets you examine the different text and graphics display
pages of the Active Workspace. The following prompt appears in the
SoftSwitch dialog box: "T = Text, 1/2 = Page 1/2 Graphics, SID =
Single/Double Hi-Res, C/M = Color Monochrome Video. Open-Apple-C to Copy,
Open-Apple-V to Paste, Escape when done."
This is a list of command keys that you can use while examining the
different display pages for the image you want to capture. Note that you can
only copy and paste while you are actually in SoftSwitch, not within the
program itself.
Press "S" for Single Hi-Res now.
The screen display will change to show you Hi-Res page I, which in this
case is the main working screen of Draw It, complete with the shape choices
at the bottom of the screen. So where is the picture that can be viewed with
the "V" key in Draw It?
Press "2" for page 2.
The display will now change to Hi-Res page 2. If you press the "T" (for
"Text") key. you can also see the help screen image of Draw It.
You use the Open-Apple-C eommand to capture or "copy" the screen image
you're viewing.
Press the "S" and "2" keys now so that you can see just the picture itself,
without the options at the bottom of the screen.
Now press Open-Apple-C.
SoftSwitch will copy the image onto its "clipboard," and then immediately
return the display to the normal SoftSwitch display screen.
"Pasting" means placing the image that is stored on the SoftSwitch clipboard
into another program (that can accept it). Pasting is done by fIrst switching
the target program into the "active workspace", and then using the Open-Apple-E
(examine) command and Open-Apple-V to paste the image. You can paste into any
program that stores and uses within itself a complete Hi-Res or Double Hi-
Res picture.
The examine command is used to make sure you're pasting onto the right image.
The Screen Manager is a program that has been provided on the SS.SYSTEM.DISK
to help illustrate this process. It is only a representative of a general class
of programs, and is not required to use the Copy & Paste feature of SoftSwitch.
Example #9: Using the Screen Manager
To see how Screen Manager is used, switch to the DeskTop (assuming you
are still in SoftSwitch). Then choose "Screen Mgr." from the Selector
menu.
Screen Manager is a simple program on the SS.SYSTEM.DISK whose sole
function is to load and save Hi-Res and Double Hi-Res pictures, and to let
you view them once they're loaded into memory.
When you run Screen Manager, you'll first see a title screen, and then a
menu headed "Screen Manager ESCAPE: Quit to BASIC"
Although you haven't loaded a picture from disk yet, you can take a look at
what is currently in memory.
Select menu item 2 (View Picture) now.
you'll be shown Hi-Res page 1. If you press "D", the display will switch
to the Double Hi-Res display. You can switch it back to Single Hi-Res by
pressing "S" again.
Press Return to go back to the Screen Manager main menu.
Now go to SoftSwitcb, and press Open-Apple-E to examine the Screen
Manager display pages.
Press "S" to see Hi-Res page 1 again, and by pressing "D" you can see the
Double Hi-Res page.
Now press the "2" key to view page 2.
You can now examine graphics display page 2, in both Hi-Res and Double
Hi-Res. For the Screen Manager, page 1 is where the program stores its
graphics images.
Remember that a copy of the picture you captured is still on the SoftSwitch
clipboard. To paste it into the Screen Manager, press the "S" and "1" keys
to look at Hi-Res page 1 again.
Now press Open-Apple- V ("V" is the Apple standard key for "paste") to
place the image in the Screen Manager's Hi-Res page I. Press Return (or
Escape) to go back to the main SoftSwitch screen.
Now exit SoftSwitch and go back to the Screen Manager. From the main
menu, things look pretty much the same, but select item 2 to view a picture
again. This time, you should see the picture that you captured from Draw
It.
To save the picture to disk, just select item #3. The disk directory will
appear. Type in TREES and press Return. The picture will be saved to the
disk.
This is the method you can use to capture the screen image from almost any
program, and then paste it into the Screen Manager to be saved. In our
example, you didn't actually use SoftSwitch to keep a stored copy of the
Screen Manager on hand, but this could have been done as well, if you
anticipated switching many times between several different programs.
This copy & paste method can also be used to move a picture from one
operating system to another, for example, DOS 3.3 to ProDOS. Simply
load both DOS and ProDOS picture handling programs into memory {such
as Blazing Paddles and Screen Manager), and then copy a picture loaded
with one and paste it into the other. The copied image can be saved, edited,
or printed, depending on the capabilities of the receiving program.
SoftSwitch can also capture 40 and 80 column text screens with the copy
command. The text screen is iUU11ediately converted into a Double Hi-Res
picture by SoftSwitch and can be saved and loaded later using the Screen
Manager. The main use for this is for printing out screen images, or "screen
dumps" using a graphics printing program to print the captured and saved
Image.
SoftSwitch does not convert Hi-Res images to Double Hi-Res or vice versa,
and so will not let you paste the wrong image type into another program.
The Screen Manager program can accept either Single or Double Hi-Res
images, but some programs, like Dazzle Draw, may accept Single or Double
Hi-Res only.
See Appendix C at the back of this manual for tips on how to copy & paste
images with specific commercial programs.
Example #10: Loading and Pasting Images
The reverse process of the previous example would be to load a picture into
memory using the Screen Manager, and to then paste it into another
program, such as a drawing program like Draw It.
If you don't already have the Screen Manager in memory, run it now from
the DeskTop.
Select menu item #1, "Select Picture from Disk."
The Select Picture function will fIrst give you a list of all disk drives
currently connected to your Apple IIGS.
Select SS.SYSTEM.DISK.
On the SS.SYSTEM.DlSK should be your saved picture "TREES", from
the previous example. Select this picture to load.
When it's loaded and you are returned to the main menu, use item 2 to view
the picture.
When you are done viewing the picture, press Return to go back to the main
menu.
Now go to SoftSwitch and press Open-Apple-E to examine the display
pages. Press "S" and" 1 " to see the picture you just loaded.
Now press Open-Apple-C to copy the image to the clipboard.
Switch to the DeskTop and exit SoftSwitch. Run Draw It from the Selector
menu (or switch to it if you have it stored in a Workspace).
You want to paste the image just captured from the Screen Manager program
into Draw It. You could do this now from SoftSwitch, but it might be hard
deciding where to paste the image if no image exists there yet. So, before
pasting into a program, it is always a good idea to look at whatever picture
that program already has in memory. Then you'll know what you're about
to replace.
To create something different than the trees currently on the SoftSwitch
clipboard, press Escape and "E" to erase any picture currently in Draw It.
Then use the mouse to select the house. Draw a few houses on the screen.
Then go to SoftSwitch, and press Open-Apple-E to examine the display
pages of Draw It. On Hi-Res page 2 you should see your houses.
Press Open-Apple-V to paste the image.
The image will be replaced with the TREES picture loaded by and copied
from the Screen Manager. Now return to Draw It.
When the Draw It screen appears, you may be surprised not to see the
pasted picture. This is because although you pasted the image onto page 2,
thus replacing the picture, the working screen hasn't been updated yet.
To update the screen, press "V" to view the picture.
The new picture appears, and when you press a key to go back to the Draw
It screen, the new picture has been updated into the program.
The actual procedure for updating the screen may vary between programs,
but the principle is the same:
1) From the fIrst (source) program, capture the actual picture image, not a
working screen, with the SoftSwitch Copy (Open-Apple-C) command.
2) Run (or switch to) the second (destination) program, and identify the
actual picture location (not the working screen) there. Paste the image using
the SoftSwitch Paste (Open-Apple-V) command.
3) Finally, return to the destination program, and force it to update its
working screen. In most programs this is done by just viewing the entire
screen picture, and then going back to the working screen.
Note: When saving pictures to disk, Screen Manager ordinarily saves
pictures to the disk from which it was run. If you want to save a picture to a
different disk or subdirectory, use the "Select Picture from Disk" option, but
do not load a picture. Instead, just select "Set This Prefix" when you have
found the desired disk or subdirectory .Then, when the picture is saved by
Screen Manager, the selected prefix will be used.
Again, be sure to see Appendix C for tips on specific commercial programs.
Example #11: Storing ProDOS Programs with Keepsake
The Keepsake program is on the SS.SYSTEM.DISK diskette and is used to
move a stored Workspace from the Apple IIGS to disk for long term
storage. The principle is fairly simple. After a program has been stored in a
Workspace with SoftSwitch, go to the DeskTop and use the Selector menu
to run Keepsake. Let's try it now with Draw It.
If it's not already in memory , run Draw It, draw a few trees or whatever,
and then store the program image in Workspace #2. Now switch to the
DeskTop.
Now run Keepsake by choosing it in the Selector menu. A screen will appear
showing the three workspaces.
In the Workspace #2 Mini-Screen, you can see the image of the stored Draw It
program. To load or save a Workspace to or from the disk, you must first
press the number key of the desired Workspace.
Press the 1, 2, or 3 keys now.
The Active Workspace display will change as you press each key.
To save Workspace #2, press the "2" key to first select Workspace #2, and then
press "S" to Store to Disk.
The screen will now change:
The first prompt shown is for the volume name of the disk you want to save the
Workspace on, and for any added names or subdirectories in the pathname
you want to use. For example, if you had a hard disk, with a subdirectory
"WORKSPACES" on it, you could type in:
/HARDl/WORKSPACES
as the compete path name.
For now, though, let's use the SS.SYSTEM.DISK. To use the default
name, just press Return.
The next prompt will be for the name to save the Workspace under. Type:
MY.DRAWING
and press Return. The disk will then come on as the suspended program
from "Draw It" is saved on the SS.SYSTEM.DISK. When the save is
complete, the Keepsake display screen will return to the display of all the
Workspaces.
Before seeing how to resume a stored Workspace, let's go to SoftSwitch
and erase any stored Workspaces.
Press Control-Open-Apple-Escape now to go to SoftSwitch.
When you enter SoftSwitch, the Active Workspace Mini-Screen will show
the Keepsake screen. If you tried to save Keepsake at this point SoftSwitch
would give you an error message reminding you that it can't save ProDOS
16 applications.
Even though Keepsake is a ProDOS 16 application, and not usable by
SoftSwitch as a switchable program, you can still go to SoftSwitch from
within it This can be used when you want to erase any Workspace needed
for loading Workspaces from disk.
You want to erase the stored version of Draw It. Pressing Open-Apple-2.
Then exit SoftSwitch and go back to Keepsake.
You can tell Keepsake to update its screen displays by pressing the space
bar. Workspace #2 is now empty.
To quit Keepsake, press "Q" to Quit, and Select the "Return to DeskTop"
option.
See the next example called "Restoring with Keepsake" for details on how
to restore a program from disk.
Example #12: Restoring with Keepsake
Now let's see how to restore a ProDOS stored Workspace from disk.
Select Keepsake from the DeskTop "Selector" menu. When it is up and
running, press the "2" key, and "L" to tell the program you want load a
program from disk. You can only load saved programs into an empty
Workspace. If Workspace 2 is not empty, go to SoftSwitch and use
Open-Apple-2 to erase it.
As before, you can enter the volume name along with any subdirectories for
the location of the stored Workspace. For now, press Return to accept the
default of SS.SYSTEM.DISK.
For the filename itself, you could enter the name MY.DRAWING directly,
but there may be times when you don't remember the exact name you used.
Let's see how to look at the disk.
Without entering a name, press Return alone, and then "C" (for "Catalog")
to see what files are on the disk. If there is more than one file on the disk,
pressing "C" will continue the list. The first entry is "SYSTEM", a
directory file. Press "C" to skip this. When you see the name
MY.DRAWING, press Return twice to load the file. You will see the mini-
image appear in Workspace #1 when the load is complete.
Quit Keepsake by pressing "Q" and Return, and go back to the DeskTop.
Then go to SoftSwitch. SoftSwitch is now loaded with the DeskTop and
MY.DRAWING. Switch to Workspace #2, and then exit SoftSwitch.
You will find yourself exactly where you left when it was saved in
SoftSwitch, and then stored on the disk.
As another example, try loading the saved Workspace file called
WS.HUNGRY using Keepsake and resuming it from SoftSwitch.
You should find yourself in a program saved quite some time ago, and
stored on the SoftSwitch diskette. "The Hungry Dot" is a program that
shows the adventures of a little dot on the screen as it bounces around eating
everything in its path.
If you have a monochrome monitor, the dot may be difficult to see. If so,
press the "M" (for "monochrome") key to get a larger dot ("C", for color,
restores the dot to the normal size). Pressing any other key will stop the
program. If you would like to save it as an Applesoft program, simply
press a key to stop the program, type TEXT for a full text screen display,
and then type SAVE HUNGRY.DOT and press Return to do the save.
The program can then be run directly from the DeskTop or Applesoft as you
wish.
Example #13: DOS 3.3 and Protected Programs
Using Keepsake with DOS 3.3 or non-standard ProDOS programs is only
slightly different than the normal procedure.
Restoring programs from disk is done in the usual way. The only concern
is whether the program you restore is the only program in SoftSwitch (i.e.,
no DeskTop in Workspace #1). If you use SoftSwitch to switch to the
stored program, and it's a protected program that you can't quit from, you'll
have no way of getting out of it and back to the DeskTop without turning off
the power or doing a Control-Open-Apple-RESET startup.
The answer, of course, is to just save the DeskTop in one of the other
Workspaces before you switch to the program you're restarting. That way,
when you're fmished, you can switch back to the DeskTop.
Likewise, when you want to save a DOS 3.3 or non-standard ProDOS
program to disk using Keepsake, you should fIrst save the DeskTop, then
run the desired program. Then you can switch back to the DeskTop to run
Keepsake.
More About Keepsake
If you have a 512K or less RAM Expansion Card (RAM Disk set to OK or
more) or a 1Mb card with only 512K or less for SoftSwitch (RAM Disk set
to 512K or more), there isn't enough room for three stored Workspaces and
Keepsake. With these settings, Keepsake should only be run with lor 2
stored Workspaces, not 3. If you have a 1Mb card, and your RAM Disk is
set to 256K or less, then you can run Keepsake with three stored
Workspaces.
If you run Keepsake and there isn't enough room in memory to load it.
Keepsake will print an error message and return to the the DeskTop. If you
have trouble running Keepsake. try erasing one of your stored Workspaces.
or changing the control panel settings to provide more memory for
SoftSwitch (smaller RAM disk size).
The usability of available RAM on the Apple IIGS depends on more than
just how much there is. It is also important that continuous blocks of
memory are available for programs to load and run properly. If you have
run Keepsake, or used the Program Launcher, AppleTalk, or any ProDOS
16 program, it is possible that SoftSwitch will not be able to save a
program in the third Workspace, even though the Memory Status box shows
some memory still available.
If you have b"ouble saving a Workspace. you may have to re-start the
SS.SYSTEM.DISK to "clean up" memory. If this happens often. you may
want to change the control panel settings to provide more memory for
SoftSwitch (smaller RAM disk size).
Saved Workspaces take a lot of disk space (289 blocks). The
SS.SYSTEM.DISK does not have enough space to save more than one
Workspace on it Thus, you must use another disk. You can use the
DeskTop to format 3.5 disks. To see how much space is on a given disk
you can select the GET INFO function in the Special menu of the DeskTop.